Soil or Coco

Coco!

sno capz said:

I currently use Mother Earth coco. I recently switched over and I'm loving the ease and friendliness of it.... Plus my girl loves it! View attachment 3443286

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Snocapz,

After much thought I took the sunshine mix #4 back to hydro store. And pick up mother earth coco and 2 small bags of perlite. Is that all you use ? What nutes do you run?

I use the following...

50% Mother Earth Coco
50% Hydroton
(Although Perlite will serve the same purpose)

I take my 5 gallon smart pot and roll the fabric down to the size of a 3 gallon pot. Next I put a good 2.5 - 3 inches of hydroton only on the bottom of the pot. This will serves as good runoff drainage, anything excess to further prevent root rot and possible over watering/feeding. Then I simply put my 50/50 mix in over the layer of "drainage" hydroton, place my seedling in the center'of the pot and mound a little more of my mix around the base of the main stem so that no water puddles around it. Lastly, I put a single layer of hydroton on the surface of my medium.

My nutrients are as follows...

Veg:
General Organics
BioThrive Grow
CalMag
BioRoot
BioWeed
BioMarine
Diamond Black

Flower:
BioThrive Bloom
CalMag
BioRoot
BioBud
BioMarine

I also use a worm tea that is brewed at my local hydroponics supply shop and it's serious stuff for adding microbes to your medium. But you could always by the equipment needed(cheap) and the tea extract and that's fairly inexpensive too. There's plenty of material on the net about it... Just look up worm tea

Just be sure that you flush your coco before mixing and transplanting to get any excess salt out of it... Use RO water pH'ed at 5.8 - 6.2 to do so

Oh and the reason I roll down my 5 gallon smart pots to 3 is so when the plant gets bigger I can simply roll the pot back up to 5 gallons and give it more of my 50/50 mix so the plant can further root without becoming bound... This way I never have to transplant

I use coco for indoor and outdoor now love the stuff. Will never use anything else since I first tried it.

Coco was a bit intimidating to me until I finally said FUCK it and bought it. Once I spent my money on it there was no going back and let me just say... I don't think I'd grow in any other medium... Super easy, low maintenance, more forgiving and if you are really trying to recycle you can flush out your coco at the end of a grow and reuse it

ch33b said:

Greetings fellow RIU'ers...

I'm considering switching to COCO / Perlite * 50/50 or 70/30* ...

I've been using Sunshine mix #4 with GH Flora Series and had good results.

I'm wondering if it would be cheaper to go COCO route but I don't know much about it (A lot of mixed reviews and opinions on the net)

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated'

-ch33b (cheeb)

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coco 70coco 30 perlite 1st until you get the feeding schedule right cause they dry out fast! use wash the coco then add grow/calmag to set the cations. The growth rate is amazing! the more perlite the more you feed = big greasy nugs! keep ph runnin from 5.6 to 6.0! Hope I could help!

sno capz said:

I use the following...

50% Mother Earth Coco
50% Hydroton
(Although Perlite will serve the same purpose)

I take my 5 gallon smart pot and roll the fabric down to the size of a 3 gallon pot. Next I put a good 2.5 - 3 inches of hydroton only on the bottom of the pot. This will serves as good runoff drainage, anything excess to further prevent root rot and possible over watering/feeding. Then I simply put my 50/50 mix in over the layer of "drainage" hydroton, place my seedling in the center'of the pot and mound a little more of my mix around the base of the main stem so that no water puddles around it. Lastly, I put a single layer of hydroton on the surface of my medium.

My nutrients are as follows...

Veg:
General Organics
BioThrive Grow
CalMag
BioRoot
BioWeed
BioMarine
Diamond Black

Flower:
BioThrive Bloom
CalMag
BioRoot
BioBud
BioMarine

I also use a worm tea that is brewed at my local hydroponics supply shop and it's serious stuff for adding microbes to your medium. But you could always by the equipment needed(cheap) and the tea extract and that's fairly inexpensive too. There's plenty of material on the net about it... Just look up worm tea

Click to expand...

Interesting. I have added coco to my soil that I amend with organic inputs (alfalfa meal, kelp meal, ewc, etc) and liked the results. The drawback to coco is that it has a lower CEC than sphagum peat moss, but the plus side to it is that it is more basic than peat alone, which is very acidic and requires some form of calcium carbonate to buffer PH.

I may just give an all coco organic mix a whirl....

sno capz said:

Coco was a bit intimidating to me until I finally said FUCK it and bought it. Once I spent my money on it there was no going back and let me just say... I don't think I'd grow in any other medium... Super easy, low maintenance, more forgiving and if you are really trying to recycle you can flush out your coco at the end of a grow and reuse it

Click to expand...

sno capz, something happend and i burnt my plants in veg im wondering the best way to flush and reuse the coco my ppms were around 400 and ph @ 6.0 (still scratching my head as to what caused it) do i need to ph my water when flushing or just pour tap water through until the run off is clear?

thanks, ch33b

I would pH the water before flushing and flush till runoff is more clear than brown. How the hell did you burn your plants?

If using tap water let it sit uncovered for 24 hours then pH and flush

My coco results so far... 37 days(or so) till harvest!